As the hunt continues for the wreckage of flight MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean, Matthew Parris, Conservative MP turned award-winning commentator and broadcaster, shares his experience of dealing with this inhospitable environment.

Believing himself to be the only British journalist to have lived in this space, spending the whole southern winter of the year 2000 on Kerguelen, an uninhabited island that Captain Cook sailed round in 1776, Matthew states that “unless you’ve been there, you can’t envisage the menacing isolation of the storm-ravaged seas where flight MH370 is lost.”

He goes on to say that this is “not a place for planes. None can land. No ship can dock. Even searchers this week from world superpowers only venture into these seas and retreat.” He adds that the wind is too strong to stand up in, as continual anticyclones rip islands of all their trees and wildlife, and that the scale of the vast distances separating one from the nearest landmass and the bottom of the ocean is also humbling.

However, whilst Matthew conveys an overwhelming sense of violence and horror, he also sees the Southern Indian Ocean as a space of great beauty. Click here to read the full article.

To find out more about Matthew Parris, or to book him as a speaker for your conference or event, please contact Leo von Bülow-Quirk at leo@chartwellspeakers.com or call 0044 (0) 20 7792 8000.

Posted at March 31, 2014, by Raleigh Addington, Comments Off on Matt Ridley on the mystery of Flight MH370

Writing in today’s Times newspaper, Lord Matt Ridley, best-selling author of “The Rational Optimist,” commented on the mystery of Flight MH370 as being “the most baffling disappearance in history.”

Matt argues that none of the possible explanations seem remotely plausible, yet one of them must be true. After debunking the scenarios that have been suggested so far, including an on-board accident, terrorism or suicide, he goes on to say that he is “struggling to find any unsolved case of mass disappearance that is remotely as baffling as this one, even from before the age of satellites.”

Matt suggests that following such a tragedy, planes should surely now be fitted with satellite tracking devices. He also posits that as some kind of human intervention seems to be at the root of the disappearance, pilotless planes may come to be seen as less dangerous than piloted ones.